First I heard of them, a radio station was making a big deal of playing the entire album of some new band. I recorded license to ill on cassette off the radio and listened to that for years. It was missing slow and low because I had to flip the tape. I still don't know that song as well as the others.

"If I could start my life all over again, I would be a professional football player, and you damn well better believe I would be a Pittsburgh Steeler."

Sabatoge and it's not even close. What forty something year old ###### like us didn't pretend to be coppers that wanted to chase bad guys down and then shoot them with names like Gummy Bear? Hawaii 5 O and Starsky & Hutch were fawking pussies even then. And then came the Beasties.

Probably one of the top 5 most influential albums in music history. 53 minutes of pleasure.

Nice...I almost posted that same thing last night. The B-Boys made sampling a work of art with that album.

Critical response

Sure, Paul's Boutique is littered with bullshit tough-guy bravado, but it's clever and hilarious bullshit: Who can be put off by claims like "I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh" and "I got more suits than Jacoby and Myers"? —Rolling Stone, August 10, 1989

Upon initial release, Paul's Boutique was alienated commercially for its experimental and dense sampling and lyricism, in contrast to the Beastie Boys's previous album, Licensed to Ill. [11] Music critic David Handelman called the record a "rap opera." [10]

While major music publications such as Rolling Stone favored the album's unique name-dropping lyrics and the album peaked at #14 on the Pop Albums chart, Paul's Boutique did not equal its predecessor's commercial success with hip hop fans, as it only peaked at #24 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. [21] The album received a gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America on September 22 of its release year. [2] Paul's Boutique would go on to sell over 2 million copies by 1999. [2] In retrospect, the album has also gone on to receive much critical acclaim and has been recognized as a landmark album in hip-hop. In a review of the album for Allmusic, contributor Stephen Thomas Erlewine summed the initialreaction to Paul's Boutique and praised the density that the albumcontains:

Musically, few hip-hop records have ever been so rich; it's not just the recontextulations of familiar music via samples, it's the flow of each song and the album as a whole, culminating in the widescreen suite that closes the record. Lyrically, the Beasties have never been better —not just because their jokes are razor-sharp, but because they construct full-bodied narratives and evocative portraits of characters and places. Few pop records offer this much to savor, and if Paul's Boutique only made a modest impact uponits initialrelease, over time its influence could be heard through pop and rap, yet no matter how its influence was felt, it stands alone as a record of stunning vision, maturity, and accomplishment. [11] —Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Miles Davis said that he never tired of listening to Paul's Boutique. [22] Later, in a VIBE interview of all three Beastie Boys, Chuck D of Public Enemy was quoted as saying that the "dirty secret" among the black hip-hop community at the time of release was that "Paul's Boutique had the best beats." [23] During the same VIBE interview, Mike D was asked about any possible hesitation he orthe band might have had regarding their overt "sampling" of several minutes of well-known Beatles background tracks, including the song "The End" on "The Sounds of Science". He claimed that the Beatles filed preliminary legal papers, and that his response was "What's cooler than getting sued by the Beatles?"

Nice...I almost posted that same thing last night. The B-Boys made sampling a work of art with that album.

Critical response

Sure, Paul's Boutique is littered with bullshit tough-guy bravado, but it's clever and hilarious bullshit: Who can be put off by claims like "I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh" and "I got more suits than Jacoby and Myers"? —Rolling Stone, August 10, 1989

Upon initial release, Paul's Boutique was alienated commercially for its experimental and dense sampling and lyricism, in contrast to the Beastie Boys's previous album, Licensed to Ill. [11] Music critic David Handelman called the record a "rap opera." [10]

While major music publications such as Rolling Stone favored the album's unique name-dropping lyrics and the album peaked at #14 on the Pop Albums chart, Paul's Boutique did not equal its predecessor's commercial success with hip hop fans, as it only peaked at #24 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. [21] The album received a gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America on September 22 of its release year. [2] Paul's Boutique would go on to sell over 2 million copies by 1999. [2] In retrospect, the album has also gone on to receive much critical acclaim and has been recognized as a landmark album in hip-hop. In a review of the album for Allmusic, contributor Stephen Thomas Erlewine summed the initialreaction to Paul's Boutique and praised the density that the albumcontains:

Musically, few hip-hop records have ever been so rich; it's not just the recontextulations of familiar music via samples, it's the flow of each song and the album as a whole, culminating in the widescreen suite that closes the record. Lyrically, the Beasties have never been better —not just because their jokes are razor-sharp, but because they construct full-bodied narratives and evocative portraits of characters and places. Few pop records offer this much to savor, and if Paul's Boutique only made a modest impact uponits initialrelease, over time its influence could be heard through pop and rap, yet no matter how its influence was felt, it stands alone as a record of stunning vision, maturity, and accomplishment. [11] —Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Miles Davis said that he never tired of listening to Paul's Boutique. [22] Later, in a VIBE interview of all three Beastie Boys, Chuck D of Public Enemy was quoted as saying that the "dirty secret" among the black hip-hop community at the time of release was that "Paul's Boutique had the best beats." [23] During the same VIBE interview, Mike D was asked about any possible hesitation he orthe band might have had regarding their overt "sampling" of several minutes of well-known Beatles background tracks, including the song "The End" on "The Sounds of Science". He claimed that the Beatles filed preliminary legal papers, and that his response was "What's cooler than getting sued by the Beatles?"

I remember searching hi and low for this record. I went to every damn record store there was trying to find this. And finally came across a guy who said "I can get it for you" Surprisingly that record store is STILL there selling mostly vinyl now.

Adam "MCA" Yauch, one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys, died Friday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 47.

With his raspy voice, Yauch started making music with Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) when they were all teenagers in New York City in the early 1980s. The Beastie Boys started out as a punk band, but in 1987, the group released Licensed to Ill, the first hop-hop album to reach No. 1 on the pop charts.

Over the next 25 years, MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock continued to win over fans and critics for their inventive, layered sampling and clever, playful lyrics, which occasionally referenced their earlier tracks. A line from Yauch's "Sure Shot" from Ill Communication, for example, addressed concerns about the group's misogynistic lyrics from its early days: "I want to say something that's long overdue / The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end."

Over the years, Yauch diversified his career interests. Under the pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower, he directed a number of Beastie Boys videos, including "Whatcha Want," "Intergalactic" and "Make Some Noise," which was released in 2011. He also directed two feature films, the 2006 Beastie Boys concert movie Awesome; I ... Shot That and Gunning for That #1 Spot, a film about high-school basketball players. His strong interest in film later inspired Yauch to create the independent film distribution and production company Oscilloscope, which has released films such as The Messenger, Wendy and Lucy and Exit Through the Gift Shop.

In 2006, Yauch joined his bandmates on Fresh Air for an in-depth conversation with Terry Gross about The Beastie Boys and their music.